Issued by
Central Executive Committee
Communist Party of Canada
December3 , 2008
The federal Conservatives under PM Stephen Harper are teetering
on the verge of shattering defeat, six short weeks after the October
14 general election. They fully deserve to be thrown out of office
in next Monday’s non-confidence vote. The Communist Party
of Canada joins with labour and other forces in calling for the
defeat of this government.
Contrary to the ‘spin-doctoring’ coming out of the
Prime Minister’s Office, the present governmental crisis
erupted not because of some conspiratorial intrigue cooked
up on the Opposition benches, but rather because of the Tories’ own
unmitigated arrogance and conceit, and their own stunning indifference
to the fears and concerns of working people as the capitalist economic
crisis deepens, threatening the jobs, benefits, pensions and social
welfare of millions of Canadian workers.
Last Thursday’s economic update presented by Finance Minister
Jim Flaherty exposed the anti-working class, right-wing, pro-corporate
nature of the Conservative government. Flaherty’s ‘mini-budget
provoked the current impasse when it failed miserably to address
the people’s concerns through legislative protections and
stimulative public spending. Instead, the Harper government used
the deepening economic crisis as an excuse to opportunistically
launch a frontal assault on the public sector through its plan
to sell off $3.4 billion in public assets to its corporate friends;
by limiting federal wages and ‘suspending’ the right
to strike for federal employees; by attacking pay equity for women;
and by cancelling the Party Financing Act, upon which
the large political parties – especially the opposition parties – largely
depend.
Wedded to their right-wing, neoconservative economic and political
agenda, and arrogantly overconfident that they could survive yet
another round of parliamentary ‘chicken’ with the opposition
parties, the Harper Conservatives decided to press ahead as if
they had a majority in Parliament. But as our Party stated immediately
after the October election, the “Tories have no mandate
to impose their right‑wing agenda on the country”.
As a result of its anti-people policies and actions, the Harper
government has not only lost the ‘confidence’ of the
majority of MPs in the House; the overwhelming support by the labour
and people’s movements for new Liberal-NDP coalition shows
that this government has also lost the confidence of most of the
Canadian people.
Our Party welcomes the refusal of the opposition parties to be
taken in by Harper’s latest retreats (to abandon the cancellation
of party financing and the ban on federal workers’ right
to strike), and calls on these parties to hold firm in their commitment
to defeat this discredited government and to establish a new working
majority in Parliament.
The defeat of the Harper Tories will mark a significant victory
for working people across Canada, but while such a change is a
necessary condition for real progress to address the pressing needs
of the people, it will not be a sufficient condition to
ensure a genuinely new direction in government policy. A new Coalition
government would be highly susceptible to public pressure, and
would open new doors to win pro-people policies.
Labour, Aboriginal peoples, youth and students, women, and other
people’s movements and organizations will need to intensify
extra-parliamentary mobilizations to demand real and immediate
action from any new government that emerges after Monday’s
vote.
In the view of the Communist Party of Canada, such an Anti-Crisis
Action Plan should include:
- protections for Canadian working people through the immediate
introduction of plant closure legislation to stop the exodus
of manufacturing jobs;
- substantial public investment in auto, forestry and other vital
manufacturing industries on a full financial equity basis (no
corporate hand-outs), along with iron-clad guarantees preventing
layoffs, job cuts, wage or pension reductions, and requiring
reinvestment in the domestic economy;
- the expansion of EI to cover all workers for the
full duration of unemployment (including the elimination
of the waiting period), with benefits at 90% of former earnings;
- a moratorium on evictions and mortgage foreclosures and utility
cut-off due to unemployment;
- an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $15/hr., along
with legislation to protect and improve wages, benefits and pensions
for all workers, to help raise incomes and stimulate domestic
consumption;
- emergency action to improve the social and economic conditions
of Aboriginal peoples;
- a massive public investment program to construct affordable
social housing, to rebuild Canada’s decaying infrastructure,
in environmental protection and conservation, and in job
creation programs for youth and the arts;
- sweeping progressive tax reform based on ability to pay,
and the revocation of all corporate tax breaks, write-offs
and deferrals at every level – measures that will shift
the tax burden from working people onto the corporations
and the wealthy;
- emergency measures to protect and extend our public healthcare,
education and other social programs, including the establishment
of a publicly funded and administered system of universal, quality,
affordable childcare with Canada-wide standard; and
- Canada’s immediate withdrawal from the disastrous
war of occupation in Afghanistan, and a 50% cut in military
spending.
The longer-term security and effectiveness of these immediate
anti-crisis actions will in turn require more transformative measures
to safeguard the jobs, incomes and services for the Canadian people,
including (amongst others):
- the democratic nationalization of the big banks, insurance
and other financial institutions in Canada;
- the nationalization of the energy industry to guarantee domestic
supply and to provide the material basis for the economic rebuilding
of Canadian industry and the creation of hundreds of thousands
of jobs;
- Canada’s immediate withdrawal from NAFTA, a halt to the “Security
and Prosperity Partnership” (SPP) negotiations, and
the adoption of a much more diversified, multilateral trade
policy based on mutual benefit; and
- the introduction of a liveable, guaranteed annual income (GAI),
as well as a shorter work week with no loss in take-home pay.
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